Free Words!

I’ve never read it, so I can’t tell you if it’s good. What I do know is that it has a large female fanbase, it’s science fiction, it normally get shelved in the YA section, and John Scalzi likes it. I’ve already downloaded the PDF, and maybe you should, too.

Get to tvtropes.org, a wiki about television, movie, and video game story techniques that doesn’t take itself anywhere near as serious as Wikipedia does. It’s a great way to waste hours of your life. You can even tell yourself you’re learning something.

In response to a poll on Facebook about if children should be forced to say the pledge of allegiance in school, I wrote the following.

I cheerfully offer my allegiance every time it comes up in my presence, but I’d vote no if I cared enough to vote in a Facebook poll.

It’s bad enough the government rounds up millions of U.S. citizens every weekday and forces them into government buildings where it can lecture them for hours at a time. Giving the government employees the authority to force those citizens to pledge their eternal loyalty to that government is really too much. Especially when someone’s legitimate excuse is often a stupid excuse is someone else’s eyes. Since the determination of legitimate would be made by one government employee or another that means that all too often the government will make the determination that gives itself more power. As a tool for human interaction, law is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.

Better to leave the issue to the pledgers and their parents rather that the teachers or the courts.